If anyone had offered me a bet on which team would be bringing home a trophy from the Florida State High School Cross Country Championships I would have said maybe, just maybe the girls of Fort Myers could pull it off. Injuries to two key runners, Amy Meng and Elizabeth McHugh put an end to those hopes. The 15th place finish by the girls of Fort Myers is nothing to hang their heads about considering the bad breaks. And on a personal note, I really feel for Amy. It's tough to suffer an injury during your senior campaign. I can relate because a serious illness killed my senior year and it's a tough pill to swallow.
The Green Wave had another card to play. The boys team caught fire the last two weeks of the season to bring home the second place trophy Class 3A. Colsen Palmer had the kind of senior season any runner would be grateful for. He took first at Regions after an awful District meet and finished seventh at the State Championship. The key to the second place finish for Fort Myers was super frosh Craig Allard, Jr. He ran a season best to take 37th and raised the bar in terms of expectations for himself and the Green Wave that returns plenty of talent next season.
The best girls team from Southwest Florida hails from Bishop Verot. Another super freshman, Mackenzie De Lisle, burst upon the scene and helped lead the Vikings to a fifth place finish in Class 2A. With junior star Julia Reitz and another junior standout Kylie Thomas returning next season for Verot, Coach Jorge Fleitas has a team that could claim a trophy next season.
Fleitas best coaching job may have been with his inexperienced boys squad. Once junior middle distance standout Cooper Banks gave up cross country for soccer, the Vikings chances of heading to Tallahassee looked slim. But the boys of Verot pulled it together to finish 19th Class 2A with a squad made up mainly of freshmen.
The other girl's team that deserves a nod is the Wolfpack squad from South Fort Myers. Coach John Halley did a masterful job in putting together a team that slipped into States behind senior standout Allyson Bratton and junior Sophia Torres. If Torres can continue to improve she could find herself with some serious hardware next year.
ECS junior Ava Povich was the dominate female runner in Southwest Florida. She scored her second straight seventh place finish at the Class 1A Championship will improving her time by 14 seconds. Povich has an excellent chance to break 11 minutes this spring in the 3200.
Another junior also made dramatic strides this fall, Canterbury junior Gabrielle Santucci. She finished 50th at State as a sophomore and improved all the way to 11th Class 1A. Santucci is better known as a middle distance ace and her improvement in cross country should pay big dividends this spring on the track.
A final word on the 2021 must include a salute to the boys and girls of SFCA who both qualified for State, Class 1A. Junior Hayden Tank made tremendous progress from his sophomore year and should a force to reckon with this spring in track in both the 1600 and 3200.
2022 should be a great one with returnees like Tank, Povich, Santucci, Allard and Torres.
